A new academic report carefully explains an important paradox with marriage in America today and the bottom line is interesting. As marriage rates continue to decline, the social sciences are documenting how robust the benefits of marriage are for adults and their children. In fact, these benefits are growing stronger in essential ways.
Brad Wilcox, a leading sociologist from the University of Virginia, and Alan J. Hawkins, a family studies scholar from Brigham Young University, both explain we are experiencing a “marriage paradox” because “culturally and demographically the institution of marriage is garnering less support even as its objective value remains high and may even be growing.”
Continued Marriage Decline
It is well documented that fewer people are marrying for various reasons that sociologists and demographers continue to study and debate. The Daily Citizen recently documented this unfortunate fact in detail. But as these two scholars explain, “while marriage remains an important life aspiration for a strong majority of Americans, dating is down, fertility is falling and marriage is in retreat.”
The U.S. marriage rate has fallen by almost 65% since 1970. Only about 50% of American adults are married today, down from 72% in 1960. Wilcox and Hawkins assert, “The bottom line is that marriage is much less likely to ground and guide the lives of American adults than it once was.”
What is more, while citizens state that they still say marriage is an important life goal, fewer are expressing this conviction today. Pew Research Center has documented that “fewer than one-in-five U.S. adults say being married is essential for a man and woman to live a fulfilling life” even while a strong majority (over 70%) still agree that marriage is “important” for a fulfilling life.
It is indeed a paradox that while marriage rates are declining, the social sciences are carefully documenting how the benefits of marriage to children and adults are robust and growing even stronger.
Growing Benefits of Marriage for Children
Professors Wilcox and Hawkins invite us to note the documented benefits of parental marriage for children in light of declining marriage rates for three reasons.
First, they explain, “we know that children are more likely to suffer negative outcomes like poverty, depression, and incarceration when raised outside of an intact, married family.” For instance,
Children raised in single-parent or cohabiting homes are about 4 times more likely to be poor compared to their similar peers living with married mothers and fathers.
They are more likely to experience social and emotional problems like early sex, depression, and suicidal ideation.
Young men living with unmarried mothers “are more likely to be incarcerated than they are to graduate from college.”
By contrast, young men from married families “are approximately 4 times more likely to graduate from college than end up in jail or prison.”
They quote center-left scholars, working from Princeton University and the Brookings Institution, who admit that research “increasingly shows that family instability undermines parents’ investments in their children, affecting the children’s cognitive and social-emotional development in ways that constrain their life chances.”
Second, they explain that this body of current research on child well-being and marital status of parents “stands in tension with what has been called the ‘family diversity’ theory.” This is essentially the “love makes a family” ideology which claims all family forms are equally good and only “love” and financial resources make the difference.
This view is popularly held, but false.
Wilcox and Hawkins explain, “On average, stable, married families enjoy markedly higher levels of financial security and resources than non-intact families, as the economist Melissa Kearney has noted.”
A fuller explanation of these well-documented facts is found here.
Third, the benefits of married parents for children appear to be increasing for some outcomes. Wilcox and Hawkins explain,
The psychologist Nicholas Zill found that the relative risk of school suspensions for children from non-intact families has grown from 1996 to 2019, even net of sociodemographic controls.
They add,
Kathleen Ziol-Guest at New York University and a team of education scholars discovered that “the estimated relationship between the single-parent family structure variable and educational attainment more than tripled in size” for years of education between 1968 and 2009; they also found the relationship between family structure and college graduation grew in this time frame [emphasis added].
There is more.
Likewise, Wilcox and colleagues (2023) have found that the links between family structure and college graduation are stronger for Millennials than Baby Boomers. This research suggests that the benefits of an intact, married family for children may be rising in the 21st century [emphasis added].
Benefits of Marriage for Adults
Wilcox and Hawkins also explain that “a considerable body of evidence indicates that marriage also matters for adults.” Specifically, “men and women who are married are markedly better off financially, physically, and emotionally than their peers who are not.”
The social sciences have amply documented how true this is.
Married men are around 55% less likely to be poor and married women about 80% less likely to be poor, even after controls for factors like race, ethnicity, education, and the presence of children.
Over time, husbands and wives accumulate markedly more assets than their never-married and divorced peers. Stably married 50-somethings have about 10 times the assets of their never-married peers, all other things being equal.
Research by Penn State demographer John Iceland (2021) indicates the link between marriage and financial well-being for adults has grown stronger over the years. Iceland explains in the introduction to his paper,
Married-couple households were the most likely to be affluent and single-parent households were the least. Moreover, the affluence gap between married couple households and all others widened. Married couples fared better because they experienced larger increases in wages and other important sources of income, such as from investments and retirement.
This means married couples manage their money more strategically than singles and even cohabiting couples because they are more likely to see their goals in common.
Regarding physical and mental health, the findings for married men and women “are also striking.”
Married men and women are substantially less likely to commit suicide than their peers in any other relational category.
Wilcox and Hawkins hold that “when it comes to mental health, the evidence indicates that married men and women are less likely to suffer from emotional problems and more likely to flourish.”
Marrieds are shown to be nearly twice as likely to report being “very happy” than their supposed carefree single peers. Marriage is even shown to boost individual happiness to levels higher than that of a notable pay raise.
One meta-analysis of 95 different published studies found that single people had a 24% higher risk of early death compared to their married peers. That study’s authors explain, “Meta-regressions showed that hazard ratios have been modestly increasing over time for [never-marrieds of] both genders, but have done so somewhat more rapidly for women.”
Wilcox and Hawkins state, “Numerous studies indicate that married men and women generally enjoy better health and better outcomes in the wake of medical treatment for illness and disease than their unmarried peers.”
In fact, numerous studies over the decades report that even among cancer patients, married individuals recover faster and more successfully than their unmarried peers who are single or divorced.
Remarkably, a 2013 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found,
For prostate, breast, colorectal, esophageal, and head/neck cancers, the survival benefit associated with marriage was larger than the published survival benefit of chemotherapy.
That is a powerful marital benefit.
Cardus Family, a Canadian think tank, published a very helpful and well-researched summary report of the rich and diverse health benefits that marriage provides.
Wilcox and Hawkins also point to the research of Tyler VanderWeele, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard, who concluded from his careful research,
The effects of marriage on health, happiness and life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial stability are thus profound.
VanderWeele adds, “Marriage and family thus appear to be an important pathway to human flourishing.”
Our authors propose five basic policy proposals, one federal and four state, that would go far in promoting marriage for those who could richly benefit from its health and financial benefits.
Eliminate marriage penalties in federal programs like Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Empower state marriage commissions to provide research, representation and encouragement in building a pro-marriage culture at the state level.
Teach the “success sequence” which encourages young people to finish their high school education, work full time, marry wisely, then start a family only after marrying. These four things dramatically reduce one’s chances of ever living in poverty.
Support community relationship education efforts to help young dating, engaged and married couples learn helpful strategies to build thriving, lasting marital relationships.
Advance affordable single-family housing possibilities, favoring married couple and families over alternative forms.
Wilcox and Hawkins conclude,
To remedy the marriage paradox, where fewer Americans find marriage appealing or accessible to them even as marriage’s objective value remains high, and may even be rising, we need more policies like this to revitalize our nation’s keystone institution.
We must do all we can to highlight for our young people the underappreciated riches that married family life provides for children, women, men and the society at large.
Related Articles and Resources
New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever
Why Marriage Really Matters – 3 Focus on the Family Reports
Research Update: The Compelling Health Benefits of Marriage
Brad Wilcox Exhorts Young People to ‘Get Married’
Cohabitation Still Harmful – Even as Stigma Disappears
Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women
Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.
Yes, Married Mothers Really Are Happier Than Unmarried and Childless Women
Married Fatherhood Makes Men Better
Marriage and the Public Good: A New Manifesto of Policy Proposals
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